The Major Health Hazards Of Fast Food. Because fast food is so convenient and cheap, it's hard to resist at times.
Many people also crave the taste of their favorite fast food burgers or fries, which makes it even harder to pass up. Unfortunately, fast food can be one of the unhealthiest options out there when it comes to your diet. It's important to understand the impact that eating fast food can have on your health, especially because it has been linked to serious conditions like diabetes and heart disease. Read this article to learn more about the health risks of the fast food you're eating and how to make healthier choices at the drive-thru. Nutritional Content Of Fast Food Many people underestimate how bad a fast food meal can be for their health. Take the Burger King Double Whopper with Cheese for example.
What's worse is that this nutritional content information is not readily available to consumers. Risk For Illness And Disease. Fast Food Health Risks. Fast food has increasingly become a significant part of the American lifestyle.
In 1970, there were about 30,000 fast-food restaurants in the United States; that number increased to 222,000 by 2001. This growing trend is concerning as many health consequences come along with a diet full of fast food. Fast food can cause high blood pressure and obesity, due to the high amounts of salt and fat in the food -- two major risk factors for heart disease. In 2010, 36.9 percent of Americans had heart disease, a number the American Heart Association projects will climb to 40.5 percent by the year 2030. In a study conducted by the American Heart Association, researchers monitored the effects of the American fast food diet on Southeast Asian populations.
While fast food items such as hamburgers and french fries, Mexican and Chinese food and pizza only contributed 1.9 percent of an American’s total fat calories in 1965, by 1996 those foods added up to 10.8 percent. Fast Food Restaurants & Nutrition Facts Compared. Fast food is bad food.
That's pretty much common knowledge these days. The majority of the foods served at fast food restaurants contain an insane amount of calories, tons of fat (including the very evil trans fat), and are high in pretty much everything else that you'd want your food to be low in. Long story short, it's the kind of food you want to avoid eating. But, you probably know this already. The funny thing is, most of the world doesn't seem to care. To show this, I've compared the nutrition facts of the most popular foods from over 20 popular fast food restaurants to see how each restaurant's version of the same food stacks up against the others. *NOTE #1* The tables below are sortable. *NOTE #2* Any questions you may have about anything you see in this fast food comparison is most likely answered at the bottom of this very page or in the "Notes" of each comparison.
French Fries (Large) Compared * KFC does not have any "french fries. " Hamburgers Compared Onion Rings Compared. America’s Unhealthiest Fast-Food Items. Which has more fat: the Baconator or the Big Mac?
Wendy's/McDonald's Quick: which fast-food sandwich do you think has more fat and calories, a McDonald’s Big Mac or Wendy’s Asiago Ranch Chicken Club? If you guessed the Big Mac, you’d be wrong by nearly 10 grams of fat and almost 200 calories. The Big Mac is still the standard-bearer of fattening fast-food sandwiches, but in reality, these days it doesn’t hold a candle to some of the other offerings out there. As the American palate demands larger and larger portions of food, packed with as many toppings as possible, fast-food chains have been more than happy to rise to the occasion.
And while burgers tend to get most of the attention when it comes to calorie overload, there are plenty of super-unhealthy items rounding out menus at the fast-food chain near you, especially breakfast items. While it might not be super-easy to discern which fast-food items are better for you than others, there are a few common-sense giveaways.